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Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Soccer and autocracy: Who do national football teams represent?

Little better illustrates the inextricable link between
sports and politics than the frequent perception of Middle Eastern and North
African national football teams as representatives of repressive autocratic
regimes.

That perception is reinforced by players’ adoption of a
neo-patriarchic acceptance of their autocratic leader as a father figure that leads
them to keep a distance to mass expressions of political discontent. It is also
strengthened by efforts by Middle Eastern and North African autocrats to
control soccer in a bid to ensure that it does not emerge as a rallying point
for protest and in an attempt to exploit the sport’s popularity to shore up
their tarnished images.

Nowhere is support for the national team more dependent on
politics than in Egypt. Opponents of the country’s military-backed interim
government blamed Ghana’s 6:1 dashing last
month of Egypt’s hopes to qualify for the first time in almost a quarter of a
century for a World Cup finals on the toppling of Egypt’s only democratically
elected president, Mohammed Morsi, by military strongman General Abdel Fatah
al-Sisi.

"You jinxed us, Al-Sisi," said Mohammed Dardeer on
Facebook, describing the general as "religiously defiled" in a
comment reminiscent of perceptions in Iran that blamed the Islamic republic’s
soccer failures on the intense interest in the game displayed by former
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It also reverts Egypt to the period before 2011
when a popular revolt forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign after 30 years
in office and militant soccer fans, one of the country’s foremost social
movements, rejected the national team as “Mubarak’s squad.”

Perceptions of the national team’s political role position
it as the object of a tug of war between nation and regime, particularly in
countries where the relationship of sports and politics is ungoverned. That
lack of governance creates gray areas that in 2010 for example allowed Egypt
and Algeria’s autocrats to whip up national emotion and bring their countries
to the brink of war over the outcome of a key World Cup qualifier.

In post-revolt Arab nations like Egypt, Tunisia and Libya political
control has largely meant preventing soccer pitches from becoming protest
rallying points. As a result, fans have been banned from stadia, forcing teams
to play in front of empty terraces. That approach is becoming however
increasingly untenable.

Ghana defeated Egypt in the first of two matches at a time
that the country is deeply divided between supporters and opponents of the
military. The coup prompted many of the military’s opponents to view the
national team as representing the regime rather than the country much as
militant soccer fans did under Mr. Mubarak. That earned them charges of being
traitors by those who see the Brotherhood rather than the military as the greatest
obstacle to resolving Egypt’s political crisis.

“When a large number of Egyptians, too many to be ignored,
felt happy after our national team lost to Ghana, didn't the coup organizers
ask themselves why they felt this way towards their national team? They most
likely will not bother themselves to think about it, but will claim naively,
‘It is out of spite so that no victories, not even in football, will be
attributed to General Al-Sisi… Al-Sisi's
Egypt is no longer the Egypt of love that celebrates victories, as tyranny and
injustice cannot win; they are defeated in every aspect, whether militarily, as
in 1967 (Israel’s defeat of Egypt), or on the sports field. It is ironic that
one of the coup leaders called the football result a catastrophe, which was
what the 1967 defeat was called.” quipped Amira Abo el-Fetouh in the Middle
East Monitor.

Ghana’s stunning thrashing of Egypt did persuade the
military to allow some 30,000 fans to attend the return match in an
out-of-the-way Cairo stadium scheduled for November 19. The symbolism of
Egypt’s performance – victory or defeat – in the return match weighs heavy on
the game given the regime’s need to project itself more positively
internationally and to counter the analogy of defeats on the military and the
soccer battlefields. The symbolism is all the greater with General Al-Sisi also
celebrating his birthday on November 19.

The qualifier alongside an earlier clash between storied Cairo
club Al Ahli SC, whose militant supporters played key roles in the toppling of
Mr. Mubarak and the subsequent three years of volatile street politics and the
Orlando Pirates, South Africa’s oldest soccer team, have become litmus tests of
the military’s ability to demonstrate that it can ensure security amid a
growing insurgency in the Sinai and continued protests against Morsi’s deposal.

Ghana, concerned about security in Egypt, is pressuring FIFA
to move the November 19 match to a neutral venue. "We will be monitoring
the game between Al Ahli and Orlando Pirates to see whether we can draw some
conclusions about the situation in Cairo ahead of our game," said Ghana
football association management committee member Yaw Boateng.

James M. Dorsey
is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the
author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer
blog and a forthcoming book with the same title.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile